Tag Archives: Ancient Wisdom

From Isocrates’ Panathenaicus: Whom, then, do I call educated, since I exclude the arts and sciences and specialties? First, those who manage well the circumstances which they encounter day by day, and who possess a judgement which is accurate in meeting occasions as they arise and rarely misses the expedient …

More from Xenophon’s Book IV of The Memorabilia, translated by H. G. Dakyns. At this point I will endeavour to explain in what way Socrates fostered this greater “dialectic” capacity among his intimates. He held firmly to the opinion that if a man knew what each reality was, he would …

From Xenephon’s Memorabilia translated by H. G. Dakyns: Such was Socrates; so helpful under all circumstances and in every way that no observer, gifted with ordinary sensibility, could fail to appreciate the fact, that to be with Socrates, and to spend long time in his society (no matter where or …

Once again Plato in the Laws, Book II, has much to say to us about education: …education is the constraining and directing of youth towards that right reason, which the law affirms, and which the experience of the eldest and best has agreed to be truly right. It seems to me that …

Some more from Plato’s Laws on education: Pleasure and pain I maintain to be the first perceptions of children, and I say that they are the forms under which virtue and vice are originally present to them. As to wisdom and true and fixed opinions, happy is the man who …

More thoughts on education from Plato’s Laws: But if you ask what is the good of education in general, the answer is easy-that education makes good men, and that good men act nobly, and conquer their enemies in battle, because they are good. And Plato continues: According to my view, …

From Book I of Plato’s Laws Then let us not leave the meaning of education ambiguous or ill-defined. At present, when we speak in terms of praise or blame about the bringing-up of each person, we call one man educated and another uneducated, although the uneducated man may be sometimes …

Considered from the perspective of someone pondering the ideals of Catholic education, there is a certain tension communicated by the phrases “ancient wisdom” and “modern technology.” We might even feel an impetus to cast it as “Ancient Wisdom vs. Modern Technology.” And why not? It seems obviously right to extol …